Swing, Swing Together

A Sergeant Cribb mystery

Grand Prix de Littérature Policière Winner, 1985

After Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian bestseller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. The novel begins, however, with skinny-dipping (under another name) by some student teachers. By chance one of them finds herself a witness in a case of murder. The suspects? Three men in a boat.

When Cribb and Thackeray take to the river in pursuit, nobody will take them seriously. However, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford.

“Lovely flavour of the time … ‘Naked? Completely, darling. In the buff. It’s awfully good fun.’ And so it all is.”
George Duthie, The Scotsman

“The most light-hearted, but by no means the least compelling, of Lovesey’s books.”
Marcel Berlins, The Times

“A relaxed and easy-going book, complete with traditional mystery traditionally solved. Enlivening the proceedings is a pert and attractive young lady who knows exactly what she wants.”
Newgate Callendar, New York Times